Cooperative Transport: Berlin's STATTAUTO (Instead of Cars) By Michael LaFond Photos by David Brandt and Michael LaFond It's not easy owning a car. Maintenance, repairs, parking, traffic, break-ins and accidents can be real headaches. Cars devour hard-to-earn cash. And after paying for registration renewals, insurance and permits, it seems you must drive just to get your money's worth. With a car, you make commitments to travel distances you wouldn't otherwise consider. So you're stuck in the thing, unable to get outdoors even though you're apparently outside. Many people live with just their feet, a bike and the bus, but you don't see how you could. For people in search of alternatives, one of the easiest ways out of auto ownership is the car co-op. A carsharing movement, building up in Europe for several years, is now making its way to the New World. In a car co-op, you don't suffer the stress of ownership. When you really need a vehicle, you can find a suitable one in the neighborhood co-op lot. The less you drive, the less you pay. And, you dramatically reduce the number of cars in your city. Page 2 RAIN Summer 1994 Volume XIV, Number 4 In Berlin, carsharing is synonymous with Stattauto. It began as a small initiative in 1988 in the Kreuzberg neighborhood, where economics student Markus Petersen and a few friends came together to share the expense and guilt of car ownership with each other. They looked for assistance to create a public carsharing project, but the government wasn't interested in their idea. They had to depend on their own vision and a few rusty old cars to get going. For two years Markus and his brother Carsten, an unemployed philosophy major, experimented with, and organized the project as a kind of test study. Though Stattauto moved slowly in the beginning, after incorporating in 1990 it rapidly developed into a significant transportation alternative. Since December of 1990 it has picked up at least one new member each day. In 1992 the group grew from 500 members to 1000, and all together there are about 3,000 active carsharers in Deutschland. Car co-ops have spread to as many as 100 cities in a growing number of European countries. Members of Stattauto, wishing to use a vehicle, simply get on the phone and dial the reservation number. Ninety
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